


show me all that I could be (tell me why I feel so low)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Dollhouse
Genre: Coulson's major crush on Skye, Echo and Skye are a terrible duo, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Phil Coulson's Cellist, also a little bit of comfort kissing, everything Coulson knows is a lie, here's a little bit of heartbreak, jesus christ sorry Coulson, memory wipes, playing with the Whedon actor stable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4511394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Did I fall asleep?"</p><p>"For a little while," Topher says, and Coulson hears the echo, deep down in his memories. It's a magical place. Did I fall asleep?</p><p>He thinks he might be sick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	show me all that I could be (tell me why I feel so low)

**Author's Note:**

> I can't help it, there are too many perfect crossover opportunities with Dollhouse, especially with the actor overlap. 
> 
> This doesn't really fit perfectly within the storyline of either show - slots somewhere into S2 of Dollhouse and somewhere after S2 E7 of SHIELD. Warning for spoilers, especially of S1 Dollhouse.
> 
> Fitzsimmons and Topher Brink are a force that should seriously never be combined, for real.

It feels kind of inevitable, later, Coulson will think, that they ran across this. A routine mission, following up on some private enterprise that Skye's research has shown is hand-in-hand with Hydra R&D -  _Rossum_ Corporation, he thinks - and then Skye and he are face to face with a girl that could be Skye's sister, all shiny long hair and kick-ass attitude. 

"Hey," she greets them, instead of attacking, and Skye shares a confused look with him.

"Hey," Skye says, eventually, "aren't you, uh, Rossum Corp? We're kind of supposed to be taking you down. I think."

"Nah," replies the girl (woman, he corrects himself, she's late 20s, maybe early 30s), and tosses her hair. "I'm from the Dollhouse, yeah. But we're kind of taking Rossum down ourselves, actually. Name's Echo." 

"Skye," Skye responds, faintly, and then, "I really have no idea what's going on here. Sir?"

"No," Coulson echoes ( _ha_ , he thinks, dimly) and frowns at Echo. "Maybe you could, uh, take us to this 'dollhouse', give us a bit more detail? Phil Coulson," he adds. "Director of SHIELD." Echo nods, once, speaks into an earpiece, and then they're being bundled into a black van. Some guy that's sending Coulson  _major_ FBI vibes is giving them a squinty expression.

"Who're they," he asks Echo, and she smirks in a way that Coulson's seen a million times on Skye's face. 

"New friends," she says. "Some group called SHIELD. Apparently about as committed to taking down Rossum as we are."

"SHIELD," FBI-guy says, looking thoughtful (and still squinty, Coulson thinks). "I've  _heard_ of you. You're the ones who terribly imploded back in DC, right? Shit everywhere, actual superheroes fighting over the Potomac, that SHIELD?"

"Yes," Coulson sighs, because it's true, "but we're turning over a new leaf. We think Rossum's in a great little public-private enterprise with Hydra. That's the, uh, evil side of SHIELD," he specifies. 

"Paul," Echo says, meaningfully, "let's save it, okay? DeWitt will want to hear this."

"Well, you're not wrong," he agrees, settles back in his seat.

 

***

 

DeWitt, Adelle, does in fact want to hear it. Coulson thinks he's a little in love, because she runs the Dollhouse with a ferocity that he can only dream of, as Director of SHIELD. They drink tea in her office, and he and Skye run through what they know, and DeWitt nods thoughtfully.

"That makes sense, but it's not exactly  _news_ that Rossum is  _quite evil_ ," she says crisply. "Why now? What have you got on them to take them down?"

"I found some information online, in the data I'd been sifting," Skye explains, and Echo clears her throat.

"Mind if I take a look?"

"Sure," Skye replies, surprised, "you're a hacker too?"

"No," Echo says, casually, "but I've got one in here." She gestures at her head and Coulson knows he looks just as confused as Skye does, right now. "Wait, you don't... you don't know what the Dollhouse  _does_ , do you?"

"Stem cell research," Skye says, uncertainly. "Super weird medical R&D. Psy-ops. Secret agent shit for Hydra?"

That's really not what Dollhouse does, it turns out.

Adelle takes them downstairs (it looks like a _spa_ , Coulson thinks, baffled) and into the lab. She introduces them to Topher, and Coulson's briefly  _terrifically glad_ that Fitzsimmons weren't in the field with them and therefore aren't here now, because Topher Brink and Fitzsimmons together would be a truly scary thing to behold. He can tell Skye's thinking the same thing.

"Hi, supremely scary government operatives," Topher says theatrically, "welcome to my  _evil lair_ , okay, you wanna know what it is we do here?"

"Well, yeah," Coulson agrees, and Topher sighs, gestures them to follow him into what's obviously the heart of the operation.

"This is the imprint room," he says, and Coulson and Skye share a really serious look, because the chair in the centre is a little too close to the memory recovery machine they've got stored in their basement.

"By  _imprint_ ," Skye asks, and Topher sighs again.

"We give people new memories," he explains, and now Coulson's really wiggy, because hello, he's been  _here_ before. Except the chair looks significantly less evil and terrifying than the chittering robot he remembers tinkering with his brain, and he's briefly super mad that Hydra gets all the best tech. 

"Look, I'll show you how it works," Topher continues, turns to Adelle. "Sierra?"

"She's on assignment," the English woman tells him, "try Victor." 

 

***

 

Victor seems pleasant, when he comes in, if a little vacant. "Hello," he says politely, "I'm here for my treatment."

"Right this way, dude," Topher says, gesturing to the chair, and Victor settles into the chair, lies back comfortably enough. "We take a wedge," Topher tells them, holding up what looks like a computer hard drive. "It contains the parameters of the imprint. I can put it together, select the traits we need, or imprint a straight-up scan of someone existing." He drops the wedge into a slot on the chair, presses a button, and it lights up, Victor going rigid. "Basic micropulse," Topher explains. "New personality, in and out, five minutes." _What if we erased them_ , Coulson hears,  _built new memories. Wiped them clean._  Yup, Coulson thinks, he's _really wiggy._

And then Victor's sitting up, looking around, and Coulson can tell, can  _tell,_ that he's not Victor anymore. He's... someone else. He's holding his body differently, eyeing them up in a way that feels oddly familiar.

" _Dude_ ," he says to Topher, "you- we- have  _got_ to stop doing this, it's  _weird_ , man,  _deeply weird_."

"Wait, is that-" Skye asks, looking between Victor and Topher in confusion.

"Topher 2.0," Victor says. "I like to think I'm the better one, actually. You are  _not_ someone I've met before, hello, have I already told you that you are very pretty?" Echo snorts, in the background, and Coulson makes eye contact with her.

"Weird, right," she says. "I can't ever get used to it, actually. The double-Topher thing, that is."

"But you," Coulson asks, "you said you've got someone  _in there_?"

"Echo's special," DeWitt tells them, with what Coulson recognises as ever-so-slightly proprietary pride. It's how he felt about Skye, at first.

"I'm a glitch," Echo says bluntly. "Thirty seven personalities, all up in here. I can slide through them at will. All of them are  _them_ , but none of them are  _me._ "

"Okay, dude, it's time for your treatment," Topher ( _Topher_ , Coulson thinks, the... original?) tells Victor/Topher, and he sighs.

"It's _always me_ ," he complains, "why can't  _you_ lie back in the chair," but he settles back, lets himself be... what, wiped? and sits up, again, looking blank.

"Did I fall asleep?"

"For a little while," Topher says, and Coulson hears the echo, deep down in his memories. _It's a magical place. Did I fall asleep?_

He thinks he might be sick.

"Are you quite alright, Director Coulson?" DeWitt asks with concern. "You're looking a bit peaky. Let me call our doctor." She leads them back out of the imprint room, into the office beyond, and Coulson sits down on the couch, staring into space. In the background, DeWitt makes a quick call, asking for a Dr Saunders to join them.

"Sir?" Skye says, sitting down next to him, touching his arm very gently. He raises his gaze to hers.

"It's what they did," he tells her, and she nods in understanding, keeps her hand on his arm. It's comforting, he has to admit. "It's what they  _did_ , Skye, they wiped... us, they wiped  _me. And_ they have better tech to do it, here."

"Director?" Adelle says cautiously. "Our doctor is here - she can check you over, if you need."

"No, I'm fine," Coulson replies, stands up, looks up, and then- " _Audrey_?"

"This is Dr Saunders," DeWitt introduces her, very politely, and Audrey smiles, briefly, offers a hand for him to shake.

"Claire Saunders, I'm the doctor of this facility," she says tightly. "I take care of the Dolls. The Actives." She has scars across her face, slash marks that Coulson can't reconcile, but she's  _Audrey_ , he knows it. He doesn't understand.

" _Coulson_ ," Skye's saying, pressing at his arm. "Coulson, the  _cellist_?  _That_ Audrey?" He nods, dumbly, his face on Claire's.

"I don't understand," he admits, "I don't... I  _know_ you, we were... You don't know me? You're not a cellist?"

"Oh," Claire says, and her smile is bitter. "No, I... my name's Whisky. I'm a fake," she explains, "an Active. A  _Doll_. They needed a doctor, so, here I am. Dr Saunders, just like they dialed up. Please excuse me, I need to..." and she disappears, her shoulders tense. _  
_

Coulson really is going to be sick.

 

***

 

Paul Ballard finds him, later, while Echo and Skye are intensely comparing data.

"Takes a bit of wrapping your brain around, huh," he says, and Coulson huffs out a laugh.

"You're telling me."

"You and Dr Saunders, what was it, 'Audrey', you were involved, I'm guessing?"

"Yeah," Coulson admits. "A couple of years ago, now." Ballard looks at him with sympathy Coulson can't decipher.

"You're not the only one whose life was infiltrated," he says. "I had a neighbour. Mellie. Really lovely, actually, had a total crush on me a mile wide. Sweetest person I've ever met. Turns out she was a sleeper agent, a long-term Dollhouse assignment designed to keep tabs on me,  _perfect_ tabs. DeWitt sent a rogue handler after her, eventually, ostensibly to kill her. Called in the sleeper activation, Mellie killed him like a trained special agent then woke up not remembering a damn thing. They  _do that_ , Coulson, they slide into your life to keep track of you, and they're so perfect you won't ever think twice."

Coulson can't help it; his eyes go to Skye. Paul follows, laughs and claps him on the shoulder.

"I don't think Agent Skye is anything to worry about," he says. "She's not one of ours, anyway. And Echo likes her, which is a good sign. She's going to bring Rossum down, Coulson, she's going to dismantle the whole fucking enterprise, and  _then_ you might find us on your doorstep, looking for a place within SHIELD."

"You'd have one," Coulson says, "we always need good agents, but - I'm going to leave Rossum to you, alright? I can't, I..."

"Yeah," Paul sighs, "yeah, I get you. Go claim your girl before Echo teaches her any more terrible habits, for real."

 

***

 

They close the file, marking it as 'unresolved', and Skye's eyes are so soft, so knowing, that Coulson can't help it. He pours himself a scotch, slides another one over to her, and they sit in silence at the bar.

"Dollhouse," he mutters miserably, breaking the silence. "We're in the  _Playground_ , what is  _with_ these base names, Skye?" She laughs, sips her drink, tops up his glass. He hadn't even realized it was empty.

"Everything I know," he says eventually. "Everything I  _do_ , all of this, it's all  _orchestrated_ , and even that, even Audrey, was a Hydra plant."

"I know," Skye agrees, and she does, she knows, because her family, her father, it's all Hydra links this and SHIELD ties that. They're two orphans fucked up by this organization, he thinks gloomily, and she rests a hand between his shoulderblades for just a moment too long.

"Tell me about Audrey," she suggests, and he does, he tells her about the cello, about going to the farmer's market on sunny Saturday mornings, about dinner dates in Portland and breakfast dates in between SHIELD missions. He tells her everything, lets it spill out, and when he's finished, he feels lighter.

"I thought," he admits eventually, drunk on definitely more than one glass of scotch, "I thought, when we realised what they were doing, when Ballard explained sleeper agents, I thought you might be one."

"Why?" Skye asks, very quiet and intent.

"Because you're perfect," he sighs, takes a breath. He's too drunk, too confessional, but he can't hold it back. "You're perfect, and I want you, I've wanted you, since you joined, and I thought, why not, why not create someone to take me down, again."

"I'm not a fake," she says, after a beat. "I'm not, Coulson, I... I'm all real, right here, and I... you  _want_ me?"

"So much," he agrees, and then, "shit, Skye,  _shit_ , I, ignore that, I'm drunk, okay, and it's inappropriate, it's really inappropriate, just, fuck. It's been a day."

"I want you," she laughs, "Director, I thought you  _knew_ , I thought you were holding back on me because you didn't feel that way," and he looks up, sees her eyes. They're full of mischief, full of amused joy, and he can't help it, he leans in to kiss her. 

"I'm not a  _doll_ ," she tells him again, in between kisses, "sir, I'm just  _yours_."


End file.
